@ JOhn

People like yourself are more the problem than politicians.

David wrote “that she admitted ‘the minister is my good friend’ before attacking his statement.

Friends and politics do mix. Barbados is politically and professionally incestuous.

Chris Sinckler’s presentation was masterful. I now see why Owen Arthur run from Sinckler like a dog that get scald.
Arthur has never won a debate with Sinckler and probably never will if he keeps running.
I think Sinckler did a briiliant job in articulating why the government has taken the steps which it has to protect our foreign reserves.
He also exposed what many already knew – that Mascoll and Arthur are espousing positions that they know are not right economically but sound good politically. I think he was also on point when he reinforced the point that the mangement of our foreign reserves must be paramount in a small open economy and all the talk about increasing consumption spending will only be to our detriment while our tourism spending remains challenged by a global recession.
Barbados has a good team at the helm right now. The empty rhetoric from the opposition has one aim – to try to fool voters into beleiving that they have a milk and honey solution.
Barbados is not Greece- we are fighting on! Good Job Mr. Sinckler!

Carson C. Cadogan | March 12, 2012 at 3:52 PM |
“I have a female dog at home that I treat better than Seethru treated Mia Amor Mottley.”

So CCC, we did not know you had a caring side to you. Good for you! We will nominate you for the Animal Welfare & Rights Award. You treat so well and love your bitch so much as to have her sleeping in the same bed as you when the night comes. Imagine a doggie without panties under the sheets! Seethru would get ravishingly jealous of your bitch called “Amor”.

Hope you get the message as to how low your contribution has fallen by comparing MIA with your female dog! Those dogs who bark must also be able to bite!
Now return to your kennel!

i’m here trying hard to listen to Dennis Kellyman. Is this guy for real? is he on some king of drugs? we as a country is in so much trouble.

@St George’s Dragon

It is a style of delivery anchored in the corn beef era.

@!

Dream on!

Mystified @CCC

“Not censorship because all else fails but because you are rude and uncouth!…………………

Mystified,
Not only is he rude and uncouth, he is crude and assassinates people’s character cruelly and does not care whom he hurts. I often wonder how he would feel if people say the same things about him that he says about Owen Arthur.

@Miller etc.
Sarge, I did not know you had such lovely boy days in Bim?
***************
Not to the Manor born, I’m from a generation that “mashed trash” for “Butts” and dug potato sprouts but that’s for another day. I didn’t even think of “brek-nek”, Politics in Barbados must be really “cut-throat” .I have to rethink my position both you and Yardbroom are correct it was a Master stroke worthy of a clever political mind. No elementary mistakes like sending a text but placing Mia on the spot by announcing publicly that she would be responding to the Estimates which left her with no exit position, if she refused she alienates the Party faithful and diminishes her in their eyes and strengthens his position, if she accepts OSA comes across as magnanimous by ceding the spotlight to her it’s a “Tails I win Heads you lose”.

As for “Check mate” it’s a move worthy of Bobby Fischer

@ John

That’s my point Exactly!! So what are you doing? But truth be told we can’t do anything without ‘power’.

Excellent presentations by Sinckler and Mottley in their contrasting styles.

1. Not sure I get the BLP’s position on energy policy. The average monthly price of oil was $33 per barrel over the 1994 to 2007 period, while it has been $88 between 2008 and feb 2012. The price per barrel has nearly tripled from their time in office and is likely to go higher. , I think that calls for a major overhaul of policy and the current policy of sticks (pass through of internationl prices) and carrots (alternative energy incentives) is a good one and incentivises the economy to adjust to a new environment.

2. Not sure I get the nation’s fixation on cost of living when energy prices have nearly tripled. Somethimes they seem more interested in scoring political points than serious analysis. Do we really want a government to focus on fulfilling its campaign promises if the environment they have to govern in is dramatically different from the one they campaigned in?

3. In looking thorugh the estimates i see that the water authority no longer needs a subsidy. To me thats progress.

4. I don’t get why a large well funded entity like the nation is so simplistic in its stories, surely they can afford quality staff or hire in expertise when they need it. It would be extremely rare and unusual for total government expemnditure to actually fall in any given year. Most analysts focus on the defict to gdp. Again a slightly sophisticated analysis would focus on the “Primary Balance” the difference between revenues and expenditures excluding debt service. Many analysts focus on this number because the policymakers have no control over debt service, so the primary balance reflects the choices they have made in terms of expenditures relative to revenues. Sinckler accuses the nation of being spiteful and politically motivated, I think they are simplistic going for easy rather than even slightly sophisticated analysis.

4. I think Sinckler did a great job of putting the forex reserves and the fixed exchange rate at the centre of government policy. I hope it is clear to the puiblic that in an environment of high oil prices, weak tourism spend attempting to drive growth via domestic consumption can be a recipe for disaster with the forex reserves and the fixed ecxhange rate. I hope Sinckler’s point that the projected level of forex reserves should drive fiscal policy was not lost.

5. If the unemployment rate is now being reported at 10.2% then it seems odd that the nation has not reported on it. Do we really believe that we have added that much jobs or was the central bank governor correct to raise the questions he raised when the rate jumped fro 10 to 12 %? There was a loud chorus then that the Stats dept was the only body to speak to unemployment. I await the debate or maybe there will be none.
I really enjoyed Mottley’s often constructive criticism,

according to my calculations the primary balance is $-392,552,131
compared to $-517,511,095 last year. I would like to see the government move to a primary surplus but at least the number is moving in the right direction rather rapidly. I would like the major paper in the land to show a little sophistication on these matters.

Ha Ha Ha…..so who laugh last Go laugh best.
Mia was true to form …..shadowing on the likes of greats like Sir Grantley and his son late JMGM Tom “the boss” Adams.
Chris boy..you were out witted and out matched….you should have studied Econ 101 while lounging up on the hill with your Admin degree..maybe you would have understood what you were GIVEN to read out LOUD..like a goose honk honk honk…..when it smell Parliament food….lol

Enuff | March 12, 2012 at 9:18 PM |

@ John

That’s my point Exactly!! So what are you doing? But truth be told we can’t do anything without ‘power’.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Don’t worry about me.

You do your piece!!

…. and look what people with power … politicians ….. have done to our country.

We do not need that power because we have a different sort of power.

@Trained Economist

Let’s not fool ourselves, the price of oil has not gone up, instead the value of the US dollar has come down. When the panic of 08 hit there was a predictable deflation and strengthening of the USD but it is the response of the FED via QE, QE2, Operation Twist, plus the other schemes, oh and that 15 Trillion dollar fraud……that ramped commodity prices. Now we are well on our way into a global currency war.

We have politicians stuck in an old paradigm, civil servants stuck in an old paradigm.

We go on and on about foreign reserves, at a time when the countries of the world with the most USD are unloading. Gold is asset class NUMBER 1 on the ECB quarterly statement for a reason. We invited Volcker here to speak, and our Minister of Finance hype the man up as the inflation killer, reality is the FED hiked rates to shake out the Hunt Brothers cornering the silver market. Volcker was just another puppet like all fed chairmen.

@ Trained Economist

I am not trying to be facetious, but you do seem to pick and choose the most simplistic things to comment upon.
Also, your query on the unemployment statistics suggest that you were not following the data as it related comparative data for third quarters in the first instance and then put them in contexts over an anual period. If you check the latest data, you would realise the overall unemployment rate is around 12. 5%.
Without being overly critical or drawing too many assumptions on your conclusions, I daresay that Sinckler did perhaps as well as he could ever do, but he was far out-distanced by Mia give the very things that the DLP want to stand upon; namely the building of a society, and the fact that it is supposed to be a caring government and its ‘cuts’ are reflecting otherwise.
The data that you put in your post relating to oil prices are very very far from the facts. In fact when Sinckler spoke about oil prices, I personally went and checked and knew he was manipulating data for his purposes but as usual he was less than accurate. What Mottley did, was to show that for the collated months the DLP has been in power, the facts would reveal that the price of oil (crude) was under $100 more often than it was above. If I may remind you should you be keen in following these things, after the highs in 2008, oil actually dropped lower per barrel than it had been over an almost 8 year period. That was highlighted all across the international world. It says quite a bit about the inflation rates that are not the direct result of exogenous shocks but more to do with indigenous shortcomings on the part of a lack lustre DLP administration.
As a trained economist, and I do not mind you taking a particular political side, I would hope that you would not deliberately mislead the less trained like myself.

@ Regina

Please do not answer me. I hope you are not so naive as to believe that the reply by Mia was a one-person show? The ultimate display of team work by the BLP. Do not share the same conclusion as people writing in the media unless you are absolutely atune to their individual motives; that can be quite misleading.

Not sure you followed the debate well george. Sinckler was making the point today that the most recent unemployment survey by the Statistical dept shows an unemployment rate of 10.2% down from the 12.5% you are referring to. He was making the point that the nation newspaper rushed to print the jump to 12.5% but there has been no such urgency to print a story above the drop to 10.2%

Not sure where you are getting your facts on oil prices. My comment that the average price of oil was $33 per barrel during the period oct 1994 to december 2007, compared to $88 per barrel over the period jan 2008 to feb 2012 is based on brent crude oil prices. you and other readers can go to the following website. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RBRTE&f=M

I certainly never made any comment about $100 barrel oil in my post.

By the way, thanks for sending readers on BU to the source for Brent Crude. Moreover, tell them where do we buy our oil from and the process. I am sure that you would not have missed Mia’s contribution stating how crude is sent from Barbados to T & T, and processed and we pay a substantially discounted costs — notwithstanding that those prices too are high. Do we want to inform and educate or do we prefer to confuse and cloud? I am about clarifying my friend.

As I understand it snicker was making the point that when the rate moved from 10 to 12 Percent the nation rushed to report the rise on the rate but they have not made a similar effort to report the reduction in the rate.

how disingenous of george Brathwaite to compare the oil prices of years past to present oil prices of over a four year period of under one hundred dollars per barrel .there is absoluelty no comparison.

@!-Trained economist
To go on a spending spree and tax reduction electioneering will only stimulate short term consumption,erode our foreign reserves and ultimately challenge our currency peg.
************************************
About time……cuz the spending spree was going on like 4 12 years now…
Mia has made very valid point that ‘Sinkler’ has presented ONLY CONSERVATIVE FIGURES….on the true financial estimates…. to make things look better than there REALLY ARE !!!
The old time trick of holding back the pepper …to come later in the sauce..
Borrowing from the NIS…only a short term strategy…yeah right…that is all they leaning on right now….we up s***e creek… Chris you all squander all on football and parties and incompetencies….People will be so relieved that !!! A+ goons will not be there…in 9 months

Why who does Geese economic writers think they fooling ?Tell them its no bother though, cuz Chris won’t be there in 2013 to deliver any Scotch Bonnies…..he shall but look on !

The stabilty of the country is whatof most importance in this debate keeping unemployment at a reasonable level. Mia focus on what the DLP has done does not relieve the BLP ofgiving alternatives in answer to Chris .

Bf onions i think your general strategy might have back fired word on the street is that they would have preffered to hear OSa than MIA Wuh yiou think!

One term or not Bajans will have a choice frying pan or fire? I suspect many of them will hold their noses when they cast their ballots.